Counterparty {XCP} Updated Details

The Counterparty Platform

Counterparty extends Bitcoin’s
functionality by “writing in the margins” of regular Bitcoin
transactions, opening the door for innovation and advanced features not
possible with ordinary Bitcoin software

The Counterparty Protocol

The Counterparty protocol is open source and extensively tested. Besides
allowing users to create and trade any kind of digital token,
Counterparty enables anyone to write specific digital agreements, or
programs known as Smart Contracts, and execute them on the Bitcoin
blockchain. Smart Contracts are a revolutionary technology which opens
the door to endless possibilities. By using the Bitcoin’s decentralized
ledger network and Counterparty’s built-in scripting language,
real-world scenarios can now be transformed into code and executed
automatically with no need for an intermediary.

XCP

XCP is used to provide functionality where it isn’t technically
possible to use BTC. For instance, XCP is the currency used to pay for
the execution of all smart contract code. More generally, XCP represents
stake in the Counterparty protocol, and is the voting currency for
changes to be decided on by the community.
XCP was created by “burning” bitcoins, which involved sending coins
to an unspendable address in exchange for XCP, ensuring an even and fair
distribution of the currency. In January 2014, over 2,100 bitcoins were
burned, creating about 2.6 million XCP. You can purchase XCP through
severalexchanges.

Counterparty Features

Tokens

Custom Counterparty tokens can be used for a wide range of
purposes and act as their own cryptocurrency, while still running on the
Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike ordinary bitcoin, custom tokens can be used
to represent any kind of value.

Smart Contracts

Besides allowing users to create any kind of digital token,
Counterparty enables anyone to write specific digital agreements, or
programs known as Smart Contracts, and execute them on the Bitcoin
blockchain. Smart contracts can be used to create “blockchain-based”
versions of traditional financial instruments, or entirely novel
financial instruments. These instruments can eliminate some or all
counterparty risk, as well as remove the need for a central or custodial
counterparty.
Counterparty’s smart contracts system is based on Ethereum, and allows contract code to be written in the
Solidity
language. In addition, Counterparty smart contracts may natively
interact with Counterparty tokens as well as access Bitcoin transactions
through the use of
BTC Relay.
In uniting Bitcoin’s decentralized ledger network with Ethereum’s
Solidity, Counterparty allows real-world scenarios to be transformed
into code and executed automatically with no intermediation while making
use of the most secure and tested blockchain available.

Asset Exchange ("DEX")

In the physical word, exchanging assets is fraught by risks and
problems, such as potential theft and reliance on an escrow agent or
central counterparty. On Counterparty, the roles of escrow agent and
clearing house are filled by the Counterparty protocol itself,
eliminating unnecessary costs, time, and third-party trust. In any
transaction the required funds are debited from each party’s address
immediately, and are not released until the conditions of the contract
have been met.

Payment Channels

Work on the upcoming Lightning Network promises to enable nearly instant, cheap and safe exchange of bitcoin between untrusted counterparties.
Features in Counterparty are under development that will allow for use of uni- or bi-directional
payment channelswith Counterparty tokens.
Future work will allow the use of the Lightning Network with
Counterparty, enabling rapid, decentralized and off-chain exchange of
tokens that settles onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

Voting

Blockchain-based voting avoids many of the issues inherent with
voting in “real world”. Digital signatures allow for identity and voting
rights to be easily established and verified, and the blockchain itself
provides an unalterable, append-only record of who voted, and when.
Counterparty provides multiple methods to perform fully decentralized voting on the blockchain:

Counterparty tokens may be created and distributed and then sent to specific addresses to signify a vote for a specified option (e.g. DevParty),

Multisignature Addresses

Multisignature transactions require signatures from more than one
Bitcoin private key to spend their funds. Counterparty supports various
multisignature schemes, such as 1-of-3, 2-of-3, 3-of-5, and more. Using
our technology, a Bitcoin “multisignature address” may be created, and
some quantity of a Counterparty token sent to it. Some quorum of signers
will then be required to digitally verify and sign any transaction that
sends these tokens somewhere else.
In practice, this allows for enhanced security measures around
Counterparty token access and distribution. Scenarios where this could
be useful include:

Allowing team members and third-party firms to initiate transactions that can be approved later by management,

allowing issuers of tokens to safely store these tokens, as well as to control their distribution, and

allowing third-party auditing services to
ensure the delivery of goods and services once contractual obligations
have been satisfied, and only release funds once verified.

Block Explorers:

Resources

counterparty-lib update 9.55.1

Release Announcement for counterparty-lib 9.55.1

Counterparty experienced roughly 14
hours of downtime on December 2nd, 2016. Counterparty is back up and
running thanks to a fix enacted by several leading Counterparty
developers. Ruben de Vries will be porting changes from master to
develop within the next day or so. Please update to the latest version of counterparty-lib (9.55.1) as soon as possible.The problem that occurred was due to
counterparty-lib not properly handling out-of-range integer data in an
edge case. To be more specific, a message was broadcast to the network
that was either created by a non-counterparty-lib implementation or a
hand-constructed Counterparty transaction. The fix enacted by
Counterparty development should prevent this from ever happening in the
future on any integer data that is embedded in the protocol.This error caused downtime for
Counterparty but no rollback will be necessary. The transaction that
caused the error was the last to occur before downtime and activity has
started once more from the spot of the problem transaction.Thank you for your support of Counterparty. As an open-source project our community is our most valuable resource. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us on the #dev channel on Slack. You can also join the conversation via Telegram.

Counterparty {XCP} Update for May 18, 2017

Due to several important new changes, we’re releasing a development update independently this week.

Transaction fee improvements

When composing a new Counterparty transaction, counterparty-lib must select which Bitcoin unspent outputs (UTXOs) to use as inputs for the transaction in order to pay the miners’ fees. We released a hotfixCounterwalletand Counterblockwallet.counterwallet.io has been updated to run it once the feature is live on mainnet. With this code, users can create subassets, trade them, and use them as they would use any other asset.

Subassets are currently live on testnet only, and will be live on mainnet around May 20, so if you haven’t updated to counterparty-lib 5.52.2 yet, please do so ASAP!

We will soon be drafting out CIP 11 as well, which will allow memo field usage to be required for sending to addresses which signal this requirement. The main use of CIP 9 and 11 together will be exchanges, who will be able to massively streamline their Counterparty deposit and withdrawal processes, which (we think) will drastically reduce support headaches, delays, and the fees they pass on to their users.

We are still aiming for a CIP 9 and 11 release sometime in mid/late June.

New block explorers

In the wake of the closing of blockscan.com, we are pleased to announce the development of two new block explorers, xchain.ioToken Explorer (developed by Inqiesquare). We are very pleased to see these new block explorers, which (especially with xchain.io) will replace the use of blockscan.com. As it is, all blockscan.com links in Counterwallet have been replaced with the cooresponding xchain.io links.

Jdog has also released counterparty2mysql, a nifty script to convert the Counterparty sqlite database into a mysql database, which he uses with xchain.io.

A donation page has recently been added to the counterparty.io website and can be found here.
This page will be kept up to date with a list of CIPs and the bounty
and development status for each CIP. In addition this page lists off
notable community members who contribute on an ongoing basis through
their development efforts and dedication to the counterparty community.

Counterparty is a community funded project and progresses solely
through the generous time and monetary donations of others. Please
consider donating to the general fund, any active bounties, or directly
to community members listed at https://counterparty.io/donate/.

Proof-of-Concept VM

John Villar, Community Director and lead developer of RarePepe.Party
has been working on a Counterparty specific VM (Virtual Machine), with
the goal to create a very stable, and safe smart contracts platform for
Counterparty. More information can be found on our forum at https://counterpartytalk.org/t/proof-of-concept-vm-development/3031.

Instant Lottery

JP Janssen, Community Director, has suggested building an XCP Lottery
into the Counterparty protocol. It will make a fair game available with
up to 1000x payout. More information can be found at https://counterpartytalk.org/t...

Robby’s Departure

Robby Dermody, one of the three Counterparty Founders, was married a
few weeks ago and will be taking a break from day-to-day involvement in
crypto projects for a while in order to slow down a bit and focus on the
simpler things, like a small farm and a child or two. You can read
Robby’s full statement at https://gist.github.com/robby-...

Robby has also donated 2,500 XCP to the Counterparty general
development fund, and hopes that his donation paired with our new CIP
bounty process – will help development continue on for the foreseeable
future.

The foundation and community wish him the best, and we give a
heartfelt thank-you for this amazing project he helped start. The door
will always be open for his return.

There will be a fifth elected seat in the next election. Discussion
on the transition is ongoing in terms of Robby’s replacement. Devon
Weller will be replacing Robby as a project maintainer on github along
with Ruben Devries.